A forum for political discourse with a bent to the growing absurdity of it all; to watch and comment on issues in Saskatoon and the performance of elected officials and those who serve them. Easy armchair politics.
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." - Cyril Connolly

Monday, October 31, 2011

Land of milk, honey and potash

Another day, another million or billion dollars. And everything to be paid by potash dollars. And if sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

This is why voter cynicism is at an all time high and voter turnout will probably be low. No one believes what they hear. Billions of spending is being promised by Lingfelter and its all going to be paid for with another "nickel on a dollar" of potash royalties. If that much money can be sourced through potash royalties, after you give First Nations their share, then use it to pay off the debt first.

The only positive in these promises is that none of them would be kept.

17 comments:

The NDP created the Potash Corp and under their asstute leadership nothing was invested into the resource nor were Royalties raised (would have taken from PCS profits). Grant Devine privatised PCS and we started to see reinvestment, mine expansion and new exploration and leases. Now the NDP wants to slow all that prosperity down so we can return to whining, complaining and the politics of envy that serves the NDP so well. Why did they not raise royalties when they were in power from 1992-2007?

Its really been a great deal for Link and the NDP. Promise anything and all you need to do to justify it is claim PCS will pay for it.

Is he an idiot? What do you think is going to happen when they sit down to discuss royalties and everyone at the table knows the government NEEDS another 800 million a year? Does he open negotiations with asking for a billion?

Not good negotiating policy when the other side knows exactly what you need and knows that you need it to fulfill a lot of other promises.

Someone needs to mention that PCS's wealth and growth is the result of an aggressive acquisition policy. In essence, PCS would have never been given the latitude to be as aggressive in purchasing and acquiring other companies had it been a Crown. It would have plodded away digging potash up in Sask.

So it is a little disingenuous to look at PCS today and envision that company if it had remained under government control. We would like see a fraction of the success had it remained a Crown.

"Someone needs to mention that PCS's wealth and growth is the result of an aggressive acquisition policy."

Someone needs to mention that is simply not true:

"However, the mines that PCS owned in 1989 still account for 80 per cent of its potash production and capacity. Since 70 per cent of the company's current gross margin is from potash (rather than phosphate and nitrogen), these mines still provide at least 55 per cent of overall profits today.

If PCS had simply held onto those historic assets, it would now be worth more than half of today's value. Even assuming that PCS would have completely stagnated as a Crown corporation after 1989, the fiscal cost of privatization was still more than five times the maximum fiscal benefit.

Depending upon which assumptions one accepts, the costs of privatization exceeded the benefits by between $18-billion and $36-billion. In other words, the Saskatchewan government gave up between $17,000 and $35,000 for every man, woman and child in the province."

Of course, this latter viewpoint is brought to you by uNDP-union heavyweight Erin Weir, hardly a objective observer in this debate.

Unfortunately, the bigger point being missed in this debate is this: even in the unlikely event that could afford to pay for Link's platform, many of the items they are advocating are counter-productive at best and harmful at worst.

Take, for instance, the NDP's stance on affordable housing. While no government in this province is without blame on market-skewing initiatives to increase the housing stock, the NDP take it to a new level. Rent control is a huge disincentive for new rental units which simultaneously diminishes quality of current properties. Tax rebates for buyers in the low-price market ($280,000) will put substantial pressure in this segment, which will reduce the relative quality of these homes and place pressure on homes $300,000 and above (which, of course, will encourage more private home building and less construction of rental units).

They also put a large increase for welfare recipients,which acts as a disincentive to get off welfare. They want to increase minimum wage, which unfairly targets small business owners and increases unemployment.

They are also campaigning to create no less than four separate "funds" to, apparently, provide resources for services which should be funded through general revenue. Not only does this type of budgeting have "slush fund" written all over it, it goes against commonly agreed upon accounting standards in governance.

If implemented, their renewable energy program would be a disaster on the scale of Spain or Denmark or any of the other monstrous Eurozone green energy scams.

In these and many other ways, the NDP's platform would detrimentally inflict great damage to our provincial economy and treasury, regardless of whether their quasi-nationization of PotashCorp is viable.

Even on the premise that slanted information is presented, the reality remains that PCS would be worth nearly half of what it is today.

It is also impossible to properly forecast the compounding effects of their transactions over time, but at the best case scenario point we are looking at a Crown corporation that is worth half of what it was today.

Funny, I haven't seen any other of our Crown Corporations been active in mergers and acquisitions with high risk-high reward payouts. Oh that's right because Crown's aren't mandated to be run like that.

I guess PCS could've stayed as a Crown and been run with an eye towards profit. Maybe the NDP would have repeated their success at Channel Lake?

The fact that you put more stock in a clearly biased opinion writer over an anonymous person says enough.

Regardless of education, how can anyone trust what is being pumped out by these large unions anymore?

The sad part for union sympathizers is that they fail to even grasp how similar big unions and big corporation are, and how they both are willing to throw Average Joe under the bus to further their own agendas. Unions are as bad or worse as corporations.

Just because your econ 101 textbook says that is what should happen, doesn't mean that it actually does in the real world."

----------------------

You are a partisan whore Anon 12:40. Do you really believe just because Carr and Krueger showed that minimum wage doesn't raise unemployment that it is actually true?

Give me any argument and it's easy to find the numbers to support whatever argument you want. It's a matter of perspective and how to spin it.

The fact that you deride one source, and dismiss the basis of it, while on the other hand randomly citing another source which you assert as true, is comical.

It doesn't matter what the statement is, as long as it comes from the right mouths it is fact for you.

......as for welfare. If the most powerful motive for people to get off welfare is being on welfare we need some new incentives. Because it doesn't appear to be a very motivating factor.

I can relate to that motivation. I mean if someone was dropping off a cheque for me monthly for doing nothing I would be super motivated to go out and find work where I'll have to work infinitely harder to marginally improve my monthly take home.

Welfare should be linked as a percentage of minimum wage, like 50% at most. That way there would be incentive that if people worked FT (even at min wage) they'd be twice as well off as they are on welfare.

Wow, you are really embarassing yourself now annon 9:04. You didn't reference any source with your claims. Maybe if you actually referenced a source instead of leaving it up to everyone else to assume you had something other than partisan assumptions to base your opinion on, you wouldn't haven't have to revert to name calling to try to make your point.

Go ahead and do some research and present some facts. Otherwise you sound like everything you are criticising the other annonymous poster who actually referenced a study.

I am not the other commenter you were debating. Just an independent person reading the debate. You relenteless name calling and union-bashing really does present you as exactly what you accuse the other person as being. There was nothing closed minded about what the other person said. The presented a view point with including a personal attack. You seem very opposed to anything that disagrees with you that you have to try to call out non-believers as closed minded.....exactly what you are being! I feel embarassed for you.

"I find it strange that those who favor an increase in the minimum wage often are the same people who complain about outsourcing, or the moving of factories to low-wage countries or the greed of corporations such as Wal-Mart eager to squeeze every last penny out of their employees by paying only what the market will bear. Surely, such greedy and enterprising organizations will find a way to avoid the impact of the minimum wage by hiring fewer workers and finding other ways to reduce the cost of workers who are suddenly more expensive yet no more productive."

Essentially, the Card & Kruger findings belie all economic logic, particularly when it comes to small businesses, which have a tough enough time as it is competing against the WalMarts and Home Depots out there.

A vote in favour of minimum wage is a vote in favour of the Big Man over the Little Guy.

ANON 2:38 Great comment. I too was reading this so called debate and finally a rational comment. I feel for the small business person that struggles to pay themselves last and may no even take home minimum wage some months. Maybe there could be a "wait for it" 2 tier wage system one for companies with less than 5 employees and one for the rest. I know this goes against the "equality" concept but in my experience people who work in ultra small companies are treated better than those in bigger businesses.

Notice to visitors

Any comments posted that are personal to an individual or their family and unrelated to to their political position or action will be removed by the blog administrator. As much as I despise censorship, I despise mean spirited slander more.

About Me

I am Elaine. I'm a political junkie. I've been on the front line, now I'm on the sideline. I am no longer married to politics, but I'm still its mistress. I know its likes, its dislikes and its dirty little secrets.
I've been a door knocker, organizer, candidate, school board trustee, city councillor, and now a civic mistress.
Great moments in my career:
*after 12 years on the Saskatoon Public School Board, left with a touch of sanity;
*three times elected chair (and so far the first and only female holding that office);
*helped prevent the building a mega million dollar white elephant for central office and in lieu re-adapted a beautiful historic building in downtown Saskatoon.
Political Philosophy: Hey, those are my tax dollars your spending.